Take-Two's President discusses the upside of adding games to Game Pass and PlayStation Plus

A: In terms of things like subscription services or a game of the month where the consumer isn't necessarily buying the individual game, obviously we don't do these things unless we think there's a significant economic opportunity for us to do so. If you see it going into one of those services you can assume that math has been done.

Yes, we do see an uptick in recurrent consumer spending generally because we bring in a lot of new players. And those players are valuable players. As long as they're engaged within the game itself, the engagement is strong, and the conversion to RCS (Recurrent Consumer Spending) is very strong.

It varies cohort to cohort and game to game, but if we do draw significant engagement from folks who are coming into the game, we are seeing very favorable results as it relates to monetization. Steam has over 132 million monthly active users.

It seems the president and CEO of Take-Two need to sit down and agree on the company's stance toward subscription services. It's no secret that Zelnick is not a friend to gamers. Besides his unreasonable fear of subscription services, he has been quoted expressing that the price range of $60-70 for games is significantly lower than it should be.

And to make matters worse, Take-Two has consistently rehashed the NBA 2K series for years, yet it's always priced as if it were an original game. It comes off as no surprise that more players are engaging with NBA 2K23 now that it's part of a subscription service, as no one wants to pay 70 bucks for last year's game again. While Slatoff might be echoing the same sentiment as Zelnick, at least he's honest about Take-Two's decision to include some of its games in these services.

In any case, gamers have expressed their frustration at developers that rush to churn out the next entry in a franchise to cash in on gamers' expectations, yet what gamers receive in exchange often fails to justify their financial investment. Much like the shift in the film industry, any strategy to reduce the entry for consumers will always be viewed favorably by the masses.

Of course, there are several problems that arise with this, such as every publisher starting their own service. However, as long as the price of games keeps increasing and the value remains the same or worse, Take-Two and other publishers shouldn't be surprised when they notice players would rather wait for a game to be added to a subscription service than buy it outright.